Kamala Harris’s big housing plan has a big problem

Vice President Kamala Harris wants to make housing more affordable and to help more Americans build wealth by investing in real estate.

Julian Zelizer : The easier it is for people to afford housing, the harder it will be for homeowners to build wealth.

Democrats should not go out of their way to encourage middle-class Americans to invest in housing, he says.

Julian Zelizer : It's inequitable to bar large investors from buying and leasing single-family homes.

He says such a policy effectively reduces supply of such housing available to renters.

Zelizer says homeownership is a perilous wealth-building strategy for less privileged Americans even today , when prices are high.

Even if Harris fails to make housing more affordable, many Americans would still be better off not tying up their savings in a house.

As the Atlantic ’s Jerusalem Demsas has written, homeownership is already a perilous financial strategy.

For affluent households, the unpredictable whims of real-estate markets aren’t that big of a problem.

But the upper middle-class can afford both homeownership and a diversified portfolio.